Engines, including diesel engines, gasoline engines, natural gas engines, and other engines known in the art, may exhaust a complex mixture of pollutants. The pollutants may be composed of gaseous and solid material, including particulate matter, nitrogen oxides (“NOx”), and sulfur compounds.
Due to heightened environmental concerns, engine exhaust emission standards have become increasingly stringent over the years. The amount of pollutants emitted from an engine may be regulated depending on the type, size, and/or class of engine. One method that has been implemented by engine manufacturers to comply with the regulation of particulate matter, NOx, and sulfur compounds exhausted to the environment has been to remove these pollutants from the exhaust flow of an engine with filters. Extended use and repeated regeneration of such filters may cause the pollutants to build up within the filters over time, and various methods exist for removing built-up pollutants from the filters. It may be difficult, however, to determine the amount of built-up pollutants captured within the filter and/or the condition of the captured pollutants. Thus, it may also be difficult to determine an appropriate filter maintenance and/or cleaning schedule.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,566,545 (the '545 patent) teaches a system for removing particulate matter from an engine filter. In particular, the '545 patent discloses a filter connected to an engine exhaust line, a valve structure within the exhaust line, and an air feeder. When air is supplied to the filter in a reverse flow direction, the air may remove captured particulates from the filter. Although the '545 patent may teach the removal of matter from a filter using a reversed flow, the system described therein is not capable of determining either the quantity or the condition of matter trapped within the filter.
The present disclosure is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.